This invention relates to transistor body bias circuits, and more particularly, to adjustable transistor body bias circuits for integrated circuits such as programmable logic devices.
The performance of modern integrated circuits is often limited by power consumption considerations. Circuits with poor power efficiency place undesirable demands on system designers. Power supply capacity may need to be increased, thermal management issues may need to be addressed, and circuit designs may need to be altered to accommodate inefficient circuitry.
Integrated circuits often use complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) transistor technology. CMOS integrated circuits have n-channel metal-oxide-semiconductor (NMOS) and p-channel metal-oxide-semiconductor (PMOS) transistors.
NMOS and PMOS integrated circuits have four terminals—a drain, a source, a gate, and a body. The body terminal, which is sometimes referred to as the well or bulk terminal, can be biased to improve transistor performance. For example, a positive bias voltage can be applied to the body of a PMOS transistor and a negative bias voltage can be applied to the body of an NMOS transistor. These bias voltages increase the effective threshold voltages of the transistors and thereby reduce their leakage currents. Reductions in leakage current reduce power consumption.
Suitable bias voltages tend to be a small. For example, an NMOS body bias voltage may be less than a few hundred millivolts. Larger body bias voltages can be used to reduce leakage current further, but can have a significant adverse impact on device performance. The optimum balance between reduced leakage current and sacrificed performance is generally obtained using small body bias voltages.
Body bias voltages can be generated off chip, but this type of approach consumes scarce input-output pins. Moreover, body bias voltage sources that are not adjustable can create problems in programmable logic devices, where it is often desirable to vary the amount of bias that is used.
It would therefore be desirable to provide adjustable on-chip transistor body bias voltage circuitry for reducing power consumption on integrated circuits such as programmable logic device integrated circuits.